Ex­ces­sive po­lice force used against black men has been the sub­ject of protests for two years across the US.

On Tues­day, Mr Scott was killed in Char­lotte af­ter po­lice say he re­fused to drop a gun he was car­ry­ing. His fam­ily say he was un­armed and hold­ing a book.

Po­lice have re­leased a video of the shoot­ing to the fam­ily, but have re­fused to make it pub­lic.

The fam­ily’s lawyer, Justin Bam­berg, said no gun was vis­i­ble in the video and Mr Scott ap­peared to be “act­ing calm”.

“You do see some­thing in his hand, but it’s im­pos­si­ble to make out from the video what it is.”

Po­lice chief Kerr Put­ney said the video proved the shoot­ing was jus­ti­fied, telling Fox news: “The of­fi­cer per­ceived his fail­ure to com­ply with com­mands, fail­ure to drop the weapon and fac­ing the of­fi­cers as an im­mi­nent threat.”

On Thurs­day, demon­stra­tors protest­ing against Mr Scott’s death de­fied a cur­few put into force by the city’s mayor on Thurs­day - run­ning from mid­night to 06:00.

Ac­cord­ing to Cpt Mike Cam­pagna, of­fi­cers did not en­force the cur­few as protests were largely